Let's call the president that has a sense of humor beyond calling people idiot nicknames "Spock-like" one more time. pic.twitter.com/JCbHMc6K2n
— Bob Schooley (@Rschooley) May 1, 2016
This showed up online well in advance of last night’s WHCD, as part of Politico‘s “Media Issue,” as a story about how the President failed to uphold the Media Village Idiots’ prescriptions:
President Barack Obama insists he does not obsess about “the narrative,” the everyday media play-by-play of political Washington. He urges his team to tune out “the noise,” “the echo chamber,” the Beltway obsession with who’s up and who’s down. But in the fall of 2014, he got sick of the narrative of gloom hovering over his White House. Unemployment was dropping and troops were coming home, yet only one in four Americans thought the nation was on the right track—and Democrats worried about the midterm elections were sprinting away from him. He wanted to break through the noise… [I]in a speech at Northwestern University, he tried to reshape his narrative. If the presidential bully pulpit couldn’t drown out the echo chamber, he figured nothing could.
The facts were that America had put more people back to work than the rest of the world’s advanced economies combined. High school graduation rates were at an all-time high, while oil imports, the deficit, and the uninsured rate had plunged. The professor-turned-president was even more insistent than usual that he was merely relying on “logic and reason and facts and data,” challenging his critics to do the same. “Those are the facts. It’s not conjecture. It’s not opinion. It’s not partisan rhetoric. I laid out facts.”
The Northwestern speech did reshape the narrative, but not in the way Obama intended. The only line that made news came near the end of his 54-minute address, an observation that while he wouldn’t be on the ballot in the fall midterms, “these policies are on the ballot—every single one of them.” When Obama boarded Air Force One after his speech, his speechwriter, Cody Keenan, told him the Internet had already flagged that line as an idiotic political gaffe… Obama’s words couldn’t change the narrative of his unpopularity; they just gave Republicans a new opening to exploit it. They quickly became a staple of campaign ads and stump speeches tying Democrats ball-and-chain to their leader. “Republicans couldn’t have written a better script,” declared The Fix, the Washington Post’s column for political junkies. Even Axelrod called it “a mistake” on Meet the Press. The substance of the speech was ignored, and Keenan still blames himself for letting one off-message phrase eclipse a story of revival, a prelude to the second Republican midterm landslide of the Obama era. “I’m still pissed off about that,” Keenan told me. “Everything he said was true and important, and that one line got turned against him.”
Obama was hailed as a new Great Communicator during his yes-we-can 2008 campaign, but he’s often had a real failure to communicate in office. The narrative began spinning out of his control in the turbulent opening days of his presidency, and he’s never totally recaptured it. His tenure has often felt like an endless series of media frenzies over messaging snafus—from the fizzled “Recovery Summer” to “you didn’t build that” to the Benghazi furor, which is mostly a furor about talking points…
Like him or not, Obama has had a hugely consequential presidency, transforming America’s approach to foreign and domestic affairs, enacting almost all of his original Change We Can Believe In policy agenda. And credit him or not, America’s trajectory has improved on his watch. Along with the trends he cited at Northwestern, the housing market, gas prices, combat deaths, and other vital statistics have moved in the right direction. So why does only a quarter of the public still think the country is on the right track? Why haven’t his reforms of health care, education, energy and Wall Street been more popular? In short, why hasn’t America gotten his message?…The president’s Spock-like, no-drama persona has also complicated his efforts to connect with the public at times when terrorists were beheading innocents and pathogens were on the loose, especially in the new on-demand environment of rapid response and viral content. Obama sees himself as playing a longer game, rising above the tyranny of the news cycle, valuing the verdict of history over the hot take. But the Washington narrative unspools in real time, and to quote one of his favorite TV shows, The Wire, the game is the game…
One day early in his race for the White House, Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, threw a newspaper on the desk of his traveling press secretary, Dan Pfeiffer. It was the inaugural issue of The Politico, a startup dedicated to as-it-breaks, wall-to-wall coverage of politics for an insider audience.
“This,” Plouffe said, “is going to be a problem.”
Along with “cable,” Obama’s dismissive shorthand for TV’s blab-a-thon of talking heads, Politico—the “The” soon disappeared—became Obama’s snide term of art for political coverage that prioritized optics over substance, short-term gamesmanship over long-term consequences, speed over thought. Eventually, his beef became less about Politico than his view that its established competitors seemed to be adopting its up-to-the-second style. He still thinks of most political journalism as superficial theater criticism, although his aides say that partly reflects his contempt for the political theater it chronicles, and they notice he still reads quite a lot of it…
There are a lot more words, which will no doubt be parsed exhaustively once the Villagers recover from #NerdProm. But once you get beyond the self-congratulation, it all breaks down to the same old problem: President Obama is a (very large) cat president in a small-dog media environment. As far as they’re concerned, his language is strange to them, he doesn’t seem to appreciate the value of their friendship overtures, his self-containment is off-putting. It’s like he’s some kind of alien! — very threatening, and yet too well-armed to be bluffed into running away. All they can do is bark & yap in chorus; fortuitously, that’s a major component of their core skill set, as the thought leaders would say.
Corner Stone
“Yeah. And I’m the foreign one.”
Corner Stone
“Then Deal Me In!”
Corner Stone
What I said
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Successful black president side effects. It wasn’t supposed to be this way – they had their narrative and he kept defying it by succeeding in the face of total GOP obstruction with the assistance of the media’s “bothsidesism” – then insisting they all do their jobs. No Fucks Left To Give Obama gave them all the red wedding they deserved last night – too bad it was just a metaphorical one. Whoops, is that too harsh? Sorry, not sorry.
PsiFighter37
The media, especially the D.C. crowd, is insufferable. The sooner most of their operations go bankrupt, the better.
WaterGirl
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Would you mind briefly explaining the red wedding thing and how it was applicable to the WHCD? I have googled it twice – maybe it’s a game of thrones reference?
JMG
Obama is maybe the most well-adjusted President of the 20th and 21st centuries. Only Truman is his peer in the normal person department. One sign of his normality is that he doesn’t just despise the Washington media as all Presidents come to do, he thinks they’re ridiculous. They know that and cannot stand it. Last night, he imitated Kobe Bryant. I’m hoping that at his next press conference he imitates Bryce Harper and tells some talking head “Clown question, bro.”
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl: Obama made the red wedding reference last night to GoT. He mentioned R Senators Tim Scott and Cory Gardner were in the house. Then called for the doors to be barred and Judge Garland to come down (for confirmation).
“We’re doing this here and now!”
Hahaha, like the red wedding.
Words to that effect.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@WaterGirl:
Yes, GOT, of which PBO is a huge fan. The Starks – one of the ruling families – is basically wiped out at what’s supposed to be a joining of forces at a wedding. PBO mentioned it in the context of Merrick Garland – he said something like “OK, ushers – bar the doors, it’s a red wedding now, we’re going to get our hearing” and then he got down to the business of the night.
ETA: All I know, is that unless you were being honored or receiving an award, you didn’t want to be name checked by PBO last night.
patroclus
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: It would have been even funnier if they had played “the Reynes of Castamere” on the audio speakers right before he said “the Red Wedding.”
Regarding the article, I’m not even going to read it. The TCU Frogs just won the Big 12 tennis championship and I’m not going to harsh my buzz from that.
ThresherK (GPad)
You had me at Politico.
NotMax
@patroclus
Standard and appropriate response regarding anything at Politico.
RK
Maureen Dowd needs to pack it in.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@patroclus:
Yup. Or playing over the opening of the Couch Commander video of “bleep you Chuck Todd”. I wonder if Chuckles had to see a doctor for his butthurt today.
SiubhanDuinne
Politico? Take up a collection to send Charles P. Pierce a fresh supply of antifreeze.
redshirt
What have the Vulcans ever done for us?
randy khan
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Except for Helen Mirren – PBO is too smart to mess with her.
patroclus
@randy khan: Or Jason Reizian (sp?)
If I ever hear The Reynes of Castamere at any ceremony I ever attend, I’m heading for the doors as fast as is humanly possible.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@randy khan:
That was so classy – just recognizing the awesomeness that is Helen. Also, Uncle Joe got a lovely loving shoutout. PBO was in control of the whole night. Larry Wilmore’s follow on was simply irrelevant – he was basically reduced to saying – “yeah, what he said” plus fuck you too Don Lemon.
rikyrah
Nothing but haters.
They despise him for his success, and for his unwillingness to kiss their behinds. They can’t stand that he was No-Drama Obama. They can’t stand that he had no scandals.
Basically, everything that I love ❤ about this President irritates them. Add into it that he is Black, and they are as around the bend as the GOP.
Mike J
@randy khan: She had the Prince insignia one her like one of the anti-demon tattoos the guys on Supernatural have.
NotMax
@patroclus
Or create your own exit.
;)
Anya
Last night on CNN a lady White House reporter (I missed her name) was lamenting the fact that POTUS doesn’t really know her name or put a face to the name eventhough she was covering him for 4-years. This came up when they were discussing how Obama’s white house is the most anti-press adminstration. The reporter was saying this was in contrast (POTUS not knowing her) to what she heard from other reporters’ experience with both Clinton and Bush white house. This is all a personal grudge for these people. Just like Cornel West.
I am disappointed in Michael Grunwald tho. He’s usually better than this.
debbie
@Corner Stone:
I like this better.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Anya:
CNN got some “special” treatment last night so the butthurt there will last a few days. It started with a joke at the expense of Jake Tapper, and continued through to the end of Larry Wilmore’s gig.
gene108
I really think the Media are a bunch of guys, who want to hang around a bully because it makes them feel tough.
They are not the ones, who will steal your lunch money, but when the bully does steal it, they’ll point out, in very polite terms, if you were a tougher manlier man you’d not have gotten beaten up and robbed. The whole injustice of the system gets ignored, because they are hanging around the guys, who punch down.
Maybe the 24/7 coverage of Ebola and ISIS shacking up under your bed getting ready to kill you in your sleep had something to do with it.
There are so many socially positive things that have happened during Obama’s tenure that it takes a deliberate level of effort for the media to ignore them.
As noted above, high school graduation rate are at a record high.
Teen pregnancy rates are at record lows.
Violent crime, despite a terrible economy 8 years ago, is at a record low.
These things alone, should make the past 8 years something to celebrate.
bemused
@Anya:
Big mewling babies. They are important people who would write nice things if they would be courted with tire swings and BBQ.
Redshift
Okay, so from skimming that excerpt, the tl;dr is “The president foolishly thought he could change The Narrative by telling people the actual facts. Haha, joke’s on him; there was one line in his speech that could be taken out of context and declared to be a mistake. Weird how that happened completely independently of us in the media, huh?”
Seems like Politico could save a lot of effort just by putting “We are colossal assholes” on the cover and calling it a day.
stinger
“the Washington narrative”
Thank Dog Obama is the President of all of us, not just of the Washington narrators.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
(photo)
Redshift
In other Politico-related news, Ryan Grim, who was working for Politico when I met him but who I thought seemed like a good guy, proved it last night by getting into a fistfight with Bill O’Reilly’s stalker-producer at the after party.
Germy
catclub
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: That ironic line by Obama about the proportionate coverage of the Trump campaign was bitter, and accurate.
different-church-lady
I think “Fuck you Chuck Todd” might need to be expanded a bit.
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady: “Fuck you Chuck Todd.”
Was the most brilliant line of the night. Except it gave Chuck Todd too much limelight and credit as a human being.
catclub
@WaterGirl: How about CPT?
I guess I should just google it.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@catclub:
The line about Trump originally wanting publicity for his hotels, but now the country (ie., PBO) is hoping Cleveland makes it through July – that was Obama’s line, not a speech writer’s. That was the realest of the night’s shit right there. The way he punked Trump too about letting Trump think he was being let off the hook as he was winding up – that was so genius. The guy’s comedy timing is next level.
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone: Yeah, I caught the Judge Garland thing, but I didn’t get why he named those republicans. So the “we’re gonna get this done here and now” is a reference to the red wedding in game of thrones?
It’s too violent for me, so I don’t watch it.
Never mind, I see another explanation right after yours. Just ignore this.
Corner Stone
@catclub: It stands for, jokes white people should not make.
WaterGirl
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: When this is all reenacted for the movie, I’ll be Helen Mirren. :-)
WaterGirl
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I loved it, but F you, Chuck Todd, that was the one that made my eyes get big. I have been ignoring Chuck Todd for the past 2 years, so I have no idea what he’s been up to, but it must have been something special to get the “bleep you” from the president. Is it a fun story that I might want to know about?
Germy
If Trump wins the presidency, this will be the next WHCD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa_8apQa-as
Jim, Foolish Literalist
yeah, i like Grunwald, I’m gonna reserve judgment until i have time to read the whole article. Seems to me he’s saying that Obama overestimated the public and the press.
doesn’t seem like MG disagrees with PBO
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
WaterGirl
@catclub: Colored People Time, which is apparently a standing reference in the black community. Mayor DeBlasio made a joke about them being on CPT recently, and Hillary was on stage, laughing, too. The President was saying that only black people get to make jokes about that – white people should never make jokes about that. At least I got one reference!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Michael Grunwald is the only political reporter who has been paying close attention to what President Black Ninja has done.
WaterGirl
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: “The guy’s comedy timing is next level.”
As far as I can tell, Obama’s everything is next level. Except bowling. Not a great bowler.
Germy
@WaterGirl: He was funnier than Jerry Seinfeld in Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: “fuck you, Chuck Todd” can take the place of In God We Trust, AFAIC, but congratulating REince Priebus on his handling of the RNC was to me the line of the night. I’m not a psychic, but i’m gonna guess it was Michael Steele’s as well (saw him on the TV coverage)
Kathleen
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: My favorite line was when he said he was testing his material so he could take it to Goldman Sachs.
redshirt
@WaterGirl: I bet he’s better now with practice.
Enjoy some Bernie art.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@WaterGirl:
LOL. If CSPAN rebroadcasts their whole coverage of the event, it includes an entire retrospective of his sports stuff and lots of other stuff, including his bowling failures. They did a great job. Try to catch a rebroadcast or download. There’s so much material to run on him and Michelle – all next level Disney-like beauty, race and charm.
WaterGirl
@Germy: He really does have great comedic timing, but my favorite thing is when he laughs at his own jokes. So charming, so endearing.
For the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone could look at Barack Obama and think “oh my god, scary black man”. It is beyond my grasp.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@catclub: CPT stands for “Colored People Time,” or as the President said, jokes White people shouldn’t make. The NY mayor (can’t think of his name right now. Getting old sucks) made a joke about being on CPT while onstage with HRC at the Apollo. It did not go well. I guess he thought since his wife is AA he could be honorary AA, but no.
Kay (not the front-pager)
@catclub: “I hope you’re proud of yourselves.” “Mm.” “Mm mm mm”
Couldn’t have been said better.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Kathleen:
He could have dropped the mic right then. I think he’ll be able to make more money than Hillary by giving speeches.
WaterGirl
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Thanks for the heads up! I might actually have that on my Tivo. I stopped recording and deleted when I checked at maybe 10 and Obama hadn’t started yet. Then started recording then. But I bet I can still get that from my deleted items folder on Tivo.
Will go look now.
WaterGirl
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I did find the deleted early part before Obama started his performance. Do you have any idea when it was on? First hour, second hour?
Adam L Silverman
@Redshift: We just need to take up a collection for Mr. Grimm to get some martial arts training. Apparently it was sort of a slap fight.
schrodinger's cat
@WaterGirl: I thought it was charge, parity and time reversal. /physics joke.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: The Red Wedding from the book is somewhat based on the actual slaughter in the Coe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Glencoe
It was a major violation of the honor codes of hospitality among the highland clans.
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: He’s just lived down to your expectations.
stinger
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: 5th anniversary – thanks for the reminder.
WaterGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: That’s okay, some of my best friends are physicists. :-)
srv
Spock at least had good writers and never pretended to be anything other than an alien.
WaterGirl
@Adam L Silverman: Got it! Not one particular event, just Chuck Todd being the total douche that he is. Is he still the Press the Meat guy?
Adam L Silverman
@WaterGirl: He is, from what I’ve been told. I don’t watch those shows. They’ll make your brains rot.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: What did Doc Mc Coy say in an earlier thread that got him a timeout?
gogol's wife
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I was wondering if you guys had discussed that yet. I was a little disappointed by her predictable choice :)
Cacti
President Obama never needed the friendship or approval of the DC media establishment.
And they hate him for it, so, so much.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: In a thread dealing with a serious topic the major contribution was asking if I got paid taxpayer dollars for this information. When he/she came back under a new nym I was prepared to let it go until he/she decided to rub my nose in it.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: Yeah, all this. All the things that make us love and respect the man and the President, they can’t stand. It’s really been rather stunning and disheartening to me to see how this President gets treated by the punditocracy – the sheer racism of it all is painful to me. The only consolation to me as a student of history is feeling sure that posterity is going to judge him as one of the greatest Presidents of the 21st century, probably one of the greatest Presidents in our history. And all his detractors are going to look as narrow and ridiculous – if they’re remembered at all – as, say, Lincoln’s detractor’s, or FDR’s, or Washington’s. No one will remember them. But Barack Hussein Obama, they will remember and revere.
So there.
WaterGirl
@gogol’s wife: For all we know, maybe that’s where her boyfriend is going (if she has one) or maybe that’s the place where she can most likely be able to be “normal’. I’m not gonna second-guess her choice; I hope Harvard turns out to be a great school for her.
rikyrah
uh huh
uh huh
Cham @kchamomile
So Malia Obama got in to Harvard and NOW there are angry white ppl decrying “legacies” to pretend they’re not just bitter and anti black ?
Cham @kchamomile
Y’all NEVER cared abt rich white ppl getting into college cause they’re rich parents got ’em in there.
Cham @kchamomile
And of COURSE Malia couldn’t have earned her acceptance into Harvard.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Miss Bianca:
I’m convinced he’ll be added to Rushmore. There’s no doubt in my mind. I hope it’s carved with his fingers to his mouth when he drops the mic.
ETA: They’re big long strong fingers, too. Unlike Trump’s ridiculous tiny fingers.
Corner Stone
@gogol’s wife: The very privileged gap year was what caught my eye, beyond the school choice. That’s fairly common, I understand, across the UK and Europe. But in the US I don’t personally know any student who is not the child of filthy rich parents who can take a “gap year”.
I am actually in favor of it. I would love to encourage that concept, across the board where feasible. It’s just currently not.
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl:
What?
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Un-fucking-believeable! Yeah, I’ll bet that Malia is a real slacker.
With so many people off the rails, I hope the pendulum swings back soon.
sunny raines
not taking anything away from obama, but any Democrat following a republican POTUS is going to look like a million bucks and history will always favor the Democrats because they actually try (succeed or not) to fix problems instead of rigging everything for the 1%.
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone: You gotta read the next few words: (if she has one)
Miss Bianca
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: I’m not convinced of that, personally. (Maybe because I hate Mt. Rushmore, maybe because I can’t see this country being ready to honor President Black Ninja that way for oh, another couple hundred years or so). But would he deserve it, if anyone did? Aw, hell yeah.
srv
@Corner Stone: Gap year kids in the US are poseurs. Real kids get a GED at 16 and hit the road.
JPL
@WaterGirl: Normal is also starting in 2017 instead of this fall. She will no longer be the President’s daughter at that time.
I might add that I’d prefer Obama declare a dictatorship and stay forever, but that’s not gonna happen
Mike J
@Corner Stone: It also makes a lot of sense for the daughter of the sitting president to wait a year and not enter school in the middle of an election. Just tons of drama that can be bypassed.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Miss Bianca:
I wouldn’t have believed a lot of stuff could happen, like electing a black president in my lifetime. PBO’s eight years has been an inflection point for this country, and the first woman president will be an important next step. After last night’s speech, it’s pretty clear he’s off the sidelines now for Hillary. All kinds of possibilities open up if we can flip the Senate which is a real possibility. I still think the House is way out of reach.
Peale
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Yeah. But there weren’t jackets and ties. The Democrats don’t know how to project seriousness.
randy khan
@Corner Stone:
Oddly enough, the only kid I know who’s taken a gap year was not the child of well off (let alone filthy rich) parents. She was, however, very well brought up and thoughtful.
Corner Stone
@Mike J: I guess we’ll see what actions are taken during the gap year.
As I said, I am 100% for the concept of a gap year. I think it makes a ton of sense, for a number of reasons. I would love for my kid to be in a position to take a gap year.
How does one hold a pre-accepted spot at a highly competitive university for a year, anyway?
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Let me give a fuller answer here: I take the mess that exists in Iraq, largely the result of American strategic malpractice beginning with an ill conceived and poorly planned invasion (too few personnel, no actual planning for what happens the day after battlefield success), very seriously. It was once explained to me by a mentor that even those who come home without PTS – and I’m fortunately one of those (I would argue I came back better than I left, that my deployment was both professionally and personally good for me) – never actually leave where they were deployed. They are always there. Given the strategic mistakes that were made, and usually were made for really bad and stupid reasons, and the moral debt this has created for us Americans in regards to Iraq and the Iraqis, being snide about what is going on, good faith attempts to analyze and explain it – things like that really get on my last nerve. If there was an actual AUMF for dealing with IS and we didn’t have the sequester so there was actually funding available, I would have already gone back to do whatever small part I could do at the theater strategic level to try to pay off that debt (and before you ask: I’ve repeatedly offered to anyone who might be able to make it happen). Having a constructive discussion in the comments that disagrees with what I’ve written, either in the original post or in follow up comments, cracking wise, going off topic – none of that would bother me. But that’s not what happened. What did happen was simply snide trolling on a topic that I am perhaps too close to for obvious reasons. And that’s why what happened happened.
Villago Delenda Est
Remember how Michael Grunwald was calling Marco “I need a drink of water, and check out these boots!” Rubio the savior of the GOP?
Good times.
NotoriousJRT
@Kay (not the front-pager):
That was a moment.
ETA: And, I bet it left a mark.
Suzanne
I hate this fact-free environment and the idea that we’re supposed to assuage the irrational emotions of people with policy choices. Fuck that with a spiky acid-tipped dick. If you are pants-shitting because of ISIS, whatever, I can’t tell you how to spend your time, but the rest of us sure as shit aren’t obligated to start a war for you so you can feel better.
I will miss POTUS BHO so very, very much.
And while I am still mildly pissed that I didn’t get accepted to Harvard, I am thrilled for Malia. I don’t know how good their film program is, but I am sure that she will be successful in any and all of her endeavors. I am exceedingly jealous of her gap year, too. I bet she packs it with travel.
WaterGirl
@JPL: True. And sign me up for Obama having a third term. We should be so lucky!
edit: I had not caught on about the gap year until now. That makes total sense.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: Ok, fine. Thanks. But up to this point he or she had just been a nominal crank with a viewpoint that did not obviously attune to yours. I was curious what had been said at the deleted comment that earned a timeout.
raven
@Adam L Silverman:
copy
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman:
I was not going to ask.
ThresherK
@WaterGirl: That’s DeBlasio. I’m so not-young, white and suburban I never heard that acronym or phrase until the thing with DeBlasio and Hillz. (And yes, that phrase usage was a cringe-inducer, even after I was reminded the mayor’s wife is black.)
Miss Bianca
@Kay (not the front-pager): *That* moment took me right back to Detroit, and the aunties of my friends who used to sit on their front porches and pass judgement on the world. That very gesture and that “mm mm mm” that just said, “yeah, you *think* I don’t know you’re full of shit, but I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday” – just calculated to shrivel you in your tracks. Loved.It. Thank you for that, PBO.
Corner Stone
And does anyone know who the actor “Kat” was at the DC DMV who questioned PBO’s birth certificate and then later walked swagging down the hallway with PBO and Boehner?
Miss Bianca
@Corner Stone: That person has been snide and borderline obtrusive/inappropriate with me, fwiw. Not so much that I would have called down the banhammer, but just saying that I felt a bit creeped out. So I personally am not sorry to see him TO’d. YMMV.
msdc
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, Grunwald was one of Obama’s biggest liberal defenders back in 2012. (He was on the Obama-as-transformative-president beat long before Krugman came around.) I wonder how many of the hand-wringing comments are from people who have actually read the article.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
I built a new deck on the back of my house and it turns out to be a perfect place to do my tai chi form. At least while the weather is nice I’m going to enjoy being out there surrounded by trees and flowers.
redshirt
@Corner Stone: Shut up, asshole.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: How was your party? Or is it tonight?
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: Which Bron pointed out in the following episode.
kdaug
@WaterGirl: Don’t, WG. It has to be known in context
Villago Delenda Est
@srv: And, yet again, you offer evidence that you are a idiot.
Villago Delenda Est
@gene108: The country is on the wrong track not because of everything you pointed out, but because the President is one of those people.
WaterGirl
@kdaug: Thanks. I’ve gotten enough of the idea to get the reference and that’s good enough for me.
Miss Bianca
@Corner Stone:
And frankly, so far as I am concerned, he could have “red-wedding’d” Cory Gardner right then and there and I would have stood up and cheered. A more useless, noisy, pandering, RWNJ meatbag would be hard to imagine. PBO would have been doing CO and the country a favor.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: No worries. Its okay to ask. I’ve pestered about everyone who could be pestered at this point. Most were very willing to hear me out and many were quite interested and looked into it, but there’s no money because of the sequester for one civilian augmentee when you’re trying to protect your core functions and personnel. And I understand that reality and have to live with it.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: Which form do you do?
Villago Delenda Est
@Miss Bianca: Oh, there are others. Jason Chaftez. Ron Johnson. Tom Cotton. Draco Malfoy…er, I mean Trey Gowdy.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: I don’t watch the show, nor have I read the books. I just remember the press the episode got.
Thoughtful David
@Corner Stone:
It’s actually becoming more common. And colleges are not only fine with it, they’re making it easy. It can be like a checkbox on the acceptance form the student fills out. In other words, no need for detailed justification or anything.
Sure, for some students it is kind of an elite thing. But some are using it to spend a year working full time and earning money for college.
I think from the college’s point of view, they get a commitment from a student they want, and a year later they get a more mature student with some real life experience.
Yeah, it is elite in that it’s not going to be something you see at big public colleges, but it happens there all the time too. It’s just not called a gap year.
Feathers
@Corner Stone: It’s the norm to be able to put off attendance for a year (or two) at almost any school. It means someone on this year’s waitlist will take her place and they know to hold a place for her next year. It used to be the non-stinking rich who took a year off before college. Back in the 80s I had some high school classmates who deferred for a year, worked full time to save up for college. Now, tuition is so high and entry level job salaries so low, it doesn’t make much sense.
I think it makes sense for her to wait. The election is coming up, and then she can support her family and sister as they move out of the White House. It will also be a less huge deal heading off to college as the daughter of a former president. And her parents can be more involved as well. Wouldn’t surprise me to see her work on the campaign.
Another note on the elite colleges, if you drop out in good academic standing there is generally no time limitation on coming back. Elisabeth Shue dropped out of Harvard to take a movie role. She went back over a decade later to take the one semester she needed to finish her degree. Nice, eh? What they really want are alumni.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: And I had it easy. A comfy bed on the command Forward Operating Base, a comfy bed, or at least a decent cot, at the Combat Outposts or Patrol Bases when I’d work with our battalions or companies or our military training team (MiTT). We rolled out, did our thing, then rolled back for the night. The brigade’s operating environment was comparatively stable and there was never any problem with getting off the base and out to do engagements or go along with patrols or attend meetings or events with the locals. The only time I was confined to the FOB was when the S3 (officer in charge of operations) and planner told me I had to be there to assist with writing the campaign plan. Even then I was able to arrange one or two one day missions off post. There were a lot of both uniformed personnel, civilians, and contractors that had things much, much worse than I did.
Corner Stone
@Feathers:
It’s the norm where? And by whom? When did that become the norm?
I don’t think Shue is an especially good example, but ymmv.
Anya
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I should also reserve judgement. I have never read a MG column and thought he was a dispenser of villager CW. He always twitters shames his colleagues. Thanks for reminding me of the value of not rusing to judgement.
Woodrowfan
the comments in the Politico article are a sewer of Obama hate. wow
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: What happened was Bron Stark (the second oldest Stark son, and, with the death of his older brother at the Red Wedding, the Lord of Winterfell, although he knew not of his brother’s death at the time) told a story about someone who violated the rules of hospitality, and the gods were not happy with him. The problem wasn’t that he killed a bunch of people, it’s that he violated the rules of hospitality to do so.
The very next scene we’re taken to the scene of the Red Wedding crime, and Walder Frey, the perpetrator of said crime. Which I took to be a foreshadowing of Walder Frey’s fate.
Adam L Silverman
@Villago Delenda Est: ok, thanks for the context.
patroclus
@msdc: I have now read the article. It’s premise (i.e., its first 3 1/2 pages) is that communications and messaging matter and that policy does not. That seems flawed, to me. The last paragraph, speculating that maybe policy matters and messaging doesn’t, seems more accurate. I think Grunwald should have omitted the first three and 1/2 pages and focused on the policy. Or maybe he could have focused on Republican obstructionism. Reagan was known as “the Great Communicator” too, but he was blown away in the midterms just like Obama. I suspect Obama will be regarded historically similarly. Grunwald seems to be missing the forest for the trees here. And because he is, it was a waste of time reading the article; just like most everything at politico. I think I’m going to go back to not reading anything from there. Grunwald’s a good writer, but this assignment to write some sort of piffle-drivel with a flawed premise about communications and messaging, made him look like a very bad Villager insider, who buys into the ludicrous nonsense that passes for D.C.-based “journalism.”
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est: The only things I know about GoT are memes across twitter. I’m not some thousandaire playboy effete like Steeplejack or some shit, and don’t have HBO.
redshirt
@Villago Delenda Est: I’ve only read the books, not watched the show. But it (Red Wedding) was a wonderful moment in the books because there was so much plotting and planning and ups and downs and you are of course rooting for the Starks so this seems like the moment the tide will turn against the Lannisters. Instead, *AAAACCCKK. It was shocking to read it originally.
raven
@Adam L Silverman: You are preachin to the choir. My tours of Korea and Vietnam were relative pieces of cake comparatively. I’ll always try to make sense of the whole thing and wonder why I see things so differently that most of my peers.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Woodrowfan:
The comments represent the elephant in the room about which millions of words and thousands of articles have been written about Obama, dancing around the one word.
Scamp Dog
@Villago Delenda Est: Spelling issue there: it’s Bran (short for Brandon) Stark. Bronn is the mercenary who becomes Tyrion Lannister’s right-hand man. I was kind of confused until your reply to Adam.
redshirt
@Scamp Dog: I wonder if there’s any relation to Tony Stark and Stark Industries.
Iowa Old Lady
I’m back from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference, and am worn out but I though BJ would enjoy this picture book I heard an editor read aloud: President Squid. If you can “look inside” the book on Amazon, you’ll see how this squid running for president sounds like Trump. The editor swears that when they were working on the book they thought they were producing hilariously over the top exaggerations.
danielx
And he never gave them turkee either, not once.
Iowa Old Lady
@redshirt: My husband accidentally watched the Red Wedding while on a business trip. He hates really violent stuff and had heard me talk about this episode, but he saw the title, Rains of Castermere, and thought he was safe. So he’s watching and all hell breaks loose to his horror.
Villago Delenda Est
@Scamp Dog: Yup, you’re right. /pedant accepted.
(I just got through reading the “Tyrion does the Eyrie” section of “A Game of Thrones” so that spelling is stuck in my head atm)
redshirt
@Iowa Old Lady: LADY STARK!!!!!
rikyrah
‘This can’t happen by accident.’
For generations, African Americans have faced unique barriers to owning a home — and enjoying the wealth it brings. In Atlanta, where predominantly black neighborhoods are still waiting for the recovery, the link between race and real estate fortune is stark.
SoUTH DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — When the new subdivisions were rising everywhere here in the 1990s and early 2000s, with hundreds and hundreds of fine homes on one-acre lots carved out of the Georgia forest, the price divide between this part of DeKalb County and the northern part wasn’t so vast.
Now, a house that looks otherwise identical in South DeKalb, on the edge of Atlanta, might sell for half what it would in North DeKalb. The difference has widened over the years of the housing boom, bust and recovery, and Wayne Early can’t explain it.
The people here make good money, he says. They have good jobs. Their homes are built of the same sturdy brick. Early, an economic development consultant and real estate agent, can identify only one obvious difference that makes property here worth so much less.
“This can’t happen by accident,” he says. “It’s too tightly correlated with race for it to be based on something else.”
……………………………………
Even well-off African Americans, like the ones in some South DeKalb subdivisions, were more likely to be given subprime loans when they should have qualified for better ones. Nationwide, black families earning around $230,000 a year, according to research by sociologist Jacob Faber, were more likely at the height of the bubble in 2006 to be given a subprime loan than white families making about $32,000. The problem, Faber argued, wasn’t that professional blacks didn’t understand that they qualified for better loans; they were targeted for bad loans. Subprime lenders viewed them, Faber argued, as particularly profitable targets.
Miss Bianca
@Iowa Old Lady: Oh, how marvelous! And I want to read “President Squid”!
Villago Delenda Est
@rikyrah: Trend only made worse by the 21st century idea that the money isn’t in getting the loan paid off, it’s in reselling it over and over for the fees involved.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
It was great. We had a bit of rain but it didn’t spoil the fun. Lots of food, wine, and live music. The kids had a bunch of their friends come over so that was nice too.
Chris T.
@Redshift:
Yes. It reminds me of when Faux News types complain that “the media” never tell “the real story” … although in their case this is even worse, since half the time, the Fox Noise people crow about how their ratings exceed everyone else’s combined. Which makes them “the media” they are complaining about. At least in Politico‘s case they’re not merely worthless, they are also small potatoes.
Emma
@srv: I don’t know how to spell that but I do know how to spell your childhood nickname: comemierda.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: The nation is still not on the right track, mostly because Republicans control Congress and keep anything decent from being done legislatively.
MomSense
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s Yang style from the William C.C. Chen lineage. I do some push hands but my knee makes me a bit limited.
redshirt
@Matt McIrvin: Not until the Republicans are rehabilitated or eliminated can we have true progress. For example, even with their small numbers, they stall major action on climate change. Not just for the US but for the world.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@rikyrah:
White America is running a racist operating system that privileges them. Pointing that out to white people is like trying to explain water to fish, but we just have to keep pointing it out. Thanks for posting these articles all the time.
rikyrah
STATE WORKERS ADMIT DENYING FOOD ASSISTANCE TO ELIGIBLE FAMILIES
State workers admit to denying food assistance to eligible families
Officials say they were shocked by the workers’ confessions (KTRK)
Sunday, May 01, 2016 10:52AM
ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Several state employees admitted to falsifying information on food stamp applications in an attempt to deny assistance to eligible families.
Officials in New Mexico say they were shocked to hear employees of the state’s Human Services department would work against those who needed help the most.
“This is something we’ve never heard before, but according to workers, has been going on for quite some time,” says Sovereign Hager with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.
In federal court, five workers said they were pressured to falsify applications for assistance by stating families had more than $100 in assets when they had less than that or none at all.
Lawyers say those people were then wrongfully denied food assistance.
Matt McIrvin
@WaterGirl: I keep getting caught short by it, because in particle physics “CPT symmetry” stands for charge conjugation/parity/time reversal, that is, the operation in which you take a physical interaction of some sort and replace all the particles with their antiparticles, all the spatial configurations with their mirror images, and reverse the direction of time. There’s a theorem that the quantum probability amplitude of the resulting process will always be the same as the original one.
Lots of interactions are also symmetric under various subsets of that, such as C, P or T alone, or some combination of two of them. And some aren’t. But you always get symmetry under all three combined, as a consequence of relativity theory, combined with some mathematical properties of quantum mechanics.
Sometimes it’s referred to as “PCT” or “TCP”, possibly specifically to avoid associations with the racial slur. But you also often see “CPT” in the literature.
catclub
@Kay (not the front-pager): Yes, that one was seriously bitter.
Mnemosyne
@JMG:
I have no idea who Mr. Harper is or what form of sportsball he plays, but now I desperately want to see this, too.
Gelfling545
@MomSense: Four more weeks til Tai Chi in the park starts up at our TTCS branch, the weather in Buffalo being a bit unreliable til them. I am eagerly anticipating.
Cacti
@rikyrah:
Wanting someone to go hungry out of spite?
There are no words.
Corner Stone
@catclub: I enjoyed the second part:
“HMMM!”
gogol's wife
@Suzanne:
they’re not known for their film program
But maybe that isn’t what she’ll end up doing.
Corner Stone
@rikyrah:
$100 in assets is the fucking cutoff? Good Christ.
gogol's wife
The Grantchester finale was fab!
catclub
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I agree. The US voting public loves it some divided government.
Has not yet caught up to the idea that divided government will never again work the way it did in the 80’s and 90’s.
Iowa Old Lady
@redshirt: I know! What really freaked my husband out was the skewering of Rob’s pregnant wife.
Monala
@patroclus: @debbie: Love that the woman card is designed like a Metro card.
opiejeanne
@Corner Stone: I don’t know, maybe because of who she is? Or maybe this is fairly common at the Ivies.
Cal Berkeley offered to hold a spot for my older daughter for two years if she attended another college during that time, because they wanted her but they were full up. She went to UC Irvine instead because her major was a well-run department, unlike Berkeley’s surprisingly disappointing version.
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
Yikes! I had not heard about that. I hope the couch at Gracie Mansion is comfortable, because Mayor de Blasio probably spent at least a few nights sleeping on it after that.
Monala
@Adam L Silverman: I think how you come back has a lot to do with the circumstances under which you went. My brother served in the first Gulf War as a recent high school grad, and came back a mess, on and off drugs for the next decade or so. As a Reservist, he got called up to serve in Iraq in 2006. He came back better for it, personally and professionally, and has been clean since. Part of that was, he didn’t see combat – he was a customs official. Second, he said it made a huge difference to serve with mature, mid-career reservists like himself, as opposed to a bunch of 18-20 year olds, just due to the wisdom and perspectives they were able to bring to the situation.
Adam L Silverman
@rikyrah: This is a municipality where streets – as in the same street and we’re talking major streets in some cases – have historically had one name in the white areas and another in the African American areas. This should not be a surprise to anyone in the greater Atlanta area.
Adam L Silverman
@srv: How do you say Republican majority House of Representatives and Senate in Spanish? Congress controls the purse strings and the Republicans control Congress.
Adam L Silverman
@MomSense: Okay. I do the original martial set. My instructor was a student of Yang Ming Xi.
RaflW
@Miss Bianca: It is racism, but extreme competence also disturbs them greatly, particularly in such high office.
1. No page-selling, click-generating scandals and 2. incompetent and/or lazy people hate smart focused capable people. The former are highly attracted to Village journalism. One of the many, many tells is the Spock bullshit. It seems so Jr. High, the petty insult of lesser minds.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: This is the problem with block granting the funding for Federal assistance programs to the states. The states set the requirements to qualify. If you make those requirements harsh enough you get a combination of few people qualifying and few applying because its just too hard to qualify. And then those states just use the money that’s supposed to go to help those in need to plug budgetary holes or for pet projects.
Adam L Silverman
@Monala: There is most likely something to what you’ve observed.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: Rob from the poor, to give to the rich!
Tenar Darell
@Germy: Damn, dude warn a person, I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.
Gretchen
Letting someone hold admission to medical school for a year is not uncommon so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be even more common for college.
Gretchen
Iowa Old Lady: are you a children’s author?
Barbara
@Corner Stone: Because that’s how it works. Universities have policies that they follow. It’s not as if Harvard doesn’t have a waiting list.
redshirt
We all know Obama is awesome, right?
Anne Laurie
@ThresherK:
Well, 25 years ago, I was working in a midwestern university’s Africana library collection, and the magnificent Nigerian expat in charge frequently used APT (African People’s time) as a joke with her colleagues. I did not use it myself, because that was soooo not my place.
On the other hand, in the same era, us subculture hobbyists used “SCA Time” (defined as ‘half an hour later than the half-hour you showed up late’ for the Society of Creative Anachronism event, and yes the inevitable physics major in the group would expound on the dilation effect). Also “(sf) Con(vention) Time” (which varied by region, apparently) and even “Folk Music Time” at coffeehouses and college tours…
Anne Laurie
@msdc:
I agree that Grunwald’s not wrong. But in this particular piece, he was reporting (for Politico) on the way various media un-Thought Leaders (led by that shiny new outlet Politico) decided they would scream & clutch pearls over everything that President Obama did or didn’t do — for clicks, and for Villager solidarity. I thought the intro I excerpted here caught that; Grunwald points out that the President achieved a lot of very valuable things, and yet all “the media” wanted to talk about was “gaffes” and “stumbles” and “not like our dear GOP friends/supporters”.
Anne Laurie
@Miss Bianca:
From the President’s lead-in, I doubt it’s a coincidence that Senators Scott & Gardner are also African-American. In the Red Wedding context, a little side-jab about people from one’s own clan that could have been more trustworthy, if they had better judgment.
mohagan
@gogol’s wife: Yes, all great except for poor Leonard. I loved that Mrs. Maguire got her man!
Robert Sneddon
@Anne Laurie: The generic version I’ve used is Anarchist Standard Time.
It may be a factor of growing up or just that con organisers have learned but most SF cons I’ve been to over the past few years have muchly improved the timekeeping in their programming and scheduling, especially the big events like awards ceremonies and Masquerades.
Dadadadadadada
Let’s not forget that the actual Spock (and several other famous Vulcans) was no one’s fool in the snark department and clearly had a wicked sense of humor.
Lurking Canadian
@Miss Bianca: As I understand it, they can’t put any more faces on Mt Rushmore, or the whole damn thing will fall down. They’ll have to find a new mountain for him.
Miss Bianca
@Anne Laurie: Err…Cory Gardner is African-American? That news is going to be a hell of a shock to his constituents…and to him as well, presumably.
Mayhap, she suggested diffidently, you’re thinking of Cory Booker?
BubbaDave
@Lurking Canadian: A separate-but-equal mountain? I think the GOP would go for that…